Current power and telecommunication facilities rely on accurate clock synchronization for a variety of basic services. The synchronization is often performed using the GPS constellation, or other satellite-based time providers. An intelligent adversary will see this as a prime vulnerability, and try to exploit it. For an adversary to render the complete constellation of satellites unavailable, a significant event must occur. Possible scenarios include: a significant, ongoing jamming effort; an all-out war with a powerful state adversary, which has incapacitated the satellite constellation; or, some form of Kessler ablation cascade.
Under these circumstances, an intelligent adversary could actively try to deny our forces from maintaining an accurate, synchronized clock. Therefore, it is also possible that the same adversary will try to deactivate ground-based synchronization methods (such as NIST WWVB), since they are easy to find—they emit RF signals that they can be easily tracked or jammed.
A method that does not disclose the location of the synchronization authority will provide significant advantages in these cases, as the system could be mobile, or located in an undisclosed secure location which is not easily discoverable by an adversary. Under the design of the present invention, the synchronization authority does not emit RF; therefore, it would be significantly easier to covertly emplace.
In the present invention, any emission, even the jammer's signal, can be used for accurate synchronization. As signals are emitted, the synchronization authority will use those signals to provide time tags, which are then shared for synchronization.
The system can be distributed and, as a corollary, it can be used to provide localization.